Riikka Thitz curator visit

SEA Foundation has the pleasure of hosting Riikka Thitz who is a Finland-based curator of contemporary performance and visual arts. Her curatorial practice encompasses contemporary performance and visual arts and explores forms of public presentation of visual and performing arts as well as their overlaps, ranging from exhibitions and performances to site-responsive projects. Riikka’s practice is informed by dramaturgical tools and especially by the concept of landscape dramaturgy.

“My approach to the public presentation of art has a rich interdisciplinary foundation, weaving together elements of material and sensory experience. By considering the specific conditions of each project, I create site-specific approaches that acknowledge the unique interplay between spaces, artworks, and the audience. The emphasis on bodily experience and multisensory engagement reflects an awareness of the ways in which art can be perceived beyond a visual experience.

I have incorporated dramaturgy into my practice as a tool for analysis and exploration. I often work through the concept of landscape dramaturgy. Based on thoughts by Ana Vujanović and Augusto Corrieri, landscape dramaturgy aims to rethink human agency and create bodily and sensory ways of experiencing the world. Landscape dramaturgy broadens the scope beyond clock-based measures of time and space, incorporating planetary cycles, geological time, and other expansive phenomena.

I examine landscape dramaturgical structures through multifaceted research such as natural science or history. However, landscape dramaturgy does not primarily prioritise specific phenomena, such as the materiality of water or the deep time embedded in rocks. Instead, landscape dramaturgy enables a simultaneous focus and expansion of perspectives to the various dimensions of the universe.

My spatial practice is informed by filmmakers Chantal Akerman, Céline Sciamma, and Charlotte Wells. In their works, the rhythms of time, direction of the gaze, and textures of materialities create ways of being that transform and oppose more traditional narrative methods, offering perspectives to the public presentation of visual art and performance.

Dramaturgy and landscape dramaturgical thinking have given me a vocabulary to structure the complex interdependencies that shape my understanding of art and the world. Working as a curator has allowed me to discuss and share this kaleidoscopic experience with others”

Bio

Riikka is a member of the curator team for the Helsinki City Theatre’s Stage for Contemporary Performance. She is currently working in the Helsinki International Artist Programme’s (HIAP) 11-month curatorial residency. Together with harpsichordist Marianna Henriksson and choreographer Anna Mustonen, she is a founding member of Art Association i dolci.

Her curatorial projects include the inaugural exhibition of the new Uniarts Academy of Fine Arts building, Ebb and flow (Kuva/Tila gallery, Helsinki 2021), and the group exhibition Solar Noon (Taattisten tila, Merimasku 2023). She is currently curating a site-specific project Sea of Mountains in the Alta Val Seriana Valley in Italy (2024). Riikka Thitz holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Exhibition Studies from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki (2021) as well as a Master of Arts double degree in Euroculture (2008) from Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and Georg-August-Universität Göttingen.

Riikka has previously worked in production, communication, and programme management positions in art organisations such as Moving in November festival Helsinki, Kiasma Theatre Helsinki, and the Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux in Brussels. Furthermore, she has acted as a producer in several freelance contemporary dance and performance productions. 

www.riikkathitz.com
www.idolci.space